Ariza3 wrote:Nash is slow and old but hes a smart defender and knows HOW TO GUARD certain players correctly. He'll know how to defend his man so that if and when he gets beat, his teammates will already be in the right spots to help.

So basically he's a smart defender like Derek Fisher is? Flashback: let's them penetrate so Bynum or another big can get in foul trouble? And Howard gets in foul trouble. I watched Dwight while living in Florida for a year. He gets silly fouls. Nash did not win one game with Lakers in pre-season and his 1st reg season game. He is not a savior but he will help others get more shots and maybe uplift them to play harder b/c right now Kobe takes a lot more shots.

Nash isn't a great defender, but he's a hard worker. He tries not to jeopardize his health, but he'll make good plays every now and then. Yes, I'd compare him to Derek Fisher defensively in terms of production and ability. Obviously he's not as strong as Fisher, but he's a little sneakier with his hands and feet.

Steve isn't going to come here and lock anyone down, but that's not what he's here for anyway. And it's not as if the defense being played by Duhon/Morris is All-NBA caliber. Nash is going to come here, use his talent to make the offense click, which in turn will help the defense click for so many of the reasons already stated.

khmrP wrote:Nash could help on transition D, if he is setting up our guys with good shots it would prevent less TO's and bad shots that lead to leak outs.

^^ Bingo.

This. Giving away possessions has been a huge issue so far this year, you limit that while increasing your efficiency on offense = better defense.

I remember even Phil talked about this sometimes missed shots (especially corner 3s from our PG/SG or SF) almost being as bad as a turnover because it presents fastbreak opportunities for the other team with poor floor balance.

Interesting. Greg Anthony said the same thing on NBATV; bad shots are turnovers. Le't add up our bad shots with our TO's; we have a disaster. Those two areas Nash should address. Limit TO's and get higher quality shots. Additionally, easier baskets in halfcourt & transition.

Ugh. I feel for the guy. He's so close. This is the most important part of the healing process though.

Right when things are their closest, you're going to want to push harder. The problem is it's not there yet and you could make things a lot worse. As tough as things are right now, we've got to take his recovery slowly.

i really think the FO needs to move on West. like its not okay for this team to be playing this bad. now a lot has to do with dantoni's lack of defensive ability and does things like switching dwight on pg's EVERYTIME for pnr d.

i think getting west would be a smart move for d and aggressiveness. i think the team needs to play at a slower pace like the 2nd half of the knicks game to really do damage. granted they didnt have melo but we out scored them 3rd and 4th quarters.

My biggest problem with this whole thing is that if Nash is truly as important to the team as we think he is (in other words he'll turn our team around completely) then we're doing something wrong. You never want one player to be sole dictator of success for your team. It's not as though we're the 08-09 Cavs or something where LeBron literally did everything for that team and if he wasn't playing they couldn't win. We have good enough players to win without Nash. I think MDA can work out fine, but he needs to start doing something different and not just wait for Nash to come back because that's a recipe for disaster.